In the slums of Mumbai where I grew up, the grocery store in our neighbourhood would fill up every evening, around 6 p.m. The year was 2000. Small buyers crowded the big shop – for a quarter kilo rice, red chilli powder and salt for one rupee, cooking oil worth a rupee or two, black mustard seeds and turmeric powder for 25-50 paisa, one or two onions, a quarter kilo each of tur dal and wheat flour, and some kerosene for the stove.
People would buy little-little every day, out of their daily wages of around Rs. 150. In those days 25 and 50 paise coins were still in circulation. The cheapest rice at the grocery store cost Rs. 20 a kilogram, tur dal Rs. 24. Most buyers picked up just half or quarter kilos of both. I don’t know why, but at our ration shop we could only get sugar, palm oil and kerosene. The rest we bought at that private kirana store.
Exhausted by then from working without a break since 8 in the morning, customers would buy provisions worth Rs 70-80 to meet the hunger of 3-4 people for the day. After calculating the monthly house rent, electricity bill and water charges at the end of the month, they would send their remaining earnings – rarely more than Rs. 2,000 – to their families in the village, by post, or along with someone travelling there.
Earn every day, spend every day – that was their life. Our home too would run on daily earnings – from selling green chillis and lemons. My mother used to send me every evening to buy chilli powder, salt and rice in small quantities. I would keep on staring at the old grandma in the shop until she would turn to nine-year-old me and ask, “What do you want?”
Many faces at the ration store became familiar to me. So we would just look and smile at each other. Several of them would not speak Marathi, the only language I knew. They spoke in Hindi, like in the movies. I had no idea at all that they were from other states and not from Maharashtra.
We lived in a 10x10 foot kholi (single room home). Even more such tiny dwellings exist today in this city, clinging to each other in narrow tube-like lanes. In some of these rooms 10-12 people stay together on rent, sometimes, all men. In some others, there are whole families living together in that small space.